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Friday, July 3, 2009

Hard Drive Troubles

I am making this post primarily to warn others about a particular model of hard disk drive. I realize that not many people will actually read this post but, hopefully, someone will find it when searching for information about this drive.

The drive is question is the Western Digital Raptor WD360ADFD 36GB 10000 RPM 16MB Cache SATA 1.5Gb/s 3.5" Hard Drive - OEM. I purchased two of these drives back in January of 2007. Both have now bitten the dust. The first died this April. The second (my C: drive) just died today. Western Digital no longer makes this drive but someone may still be selling them used or from back stock. DO NOT BUY THIS DRIVE. Granted, I am working from a statistical sample of N=2. But when 100% of the drives purchased goes bad within months of each other, that is a really bad sign.

If you do have this drive then be sure to back up your data almost every day and perhaps think about replacing it soon. I had no warning that the drive was going bad. It worked fine last night and then this morning all it did is click when I booted my computer.

Fortunately, Western Digital's tech support is very nice and did not hassle me at all. When I told them the sound it was making the young man simply said, "Wow" and started processing my RMA.

When I RMA'd the last drive they sent me a larger but slower drive. I did not mind. I expect that they will do the same and now I am glad because I don't want another of these drives in my computer again. When I purchased these drives I also purchased a similar model but in a 74 GB capacity. Now I am worried that it will also go bad on me. That one would be more trouble because it is the drive where I keep all my data. I guess I will have to start backing up a lot more often.